Eugenio J. Alemán, Senior Economist at Wells Fargo, explains that Chile’s GDP growth slowed down considerably in the fourth quarter but still manage to grow at 2.1% during 2015.
Key Quotes:
“The Chilean economy managed to grow at 2.1 percent during full-year 2015 even as GDP rose only 1.3 percent in Q4 on a year-over-year basis. Still, the economy did slightly better in 2015 than in 2014.”
“The slowdown in economic activity across the globe as well as the drop in copper prices, Chile’s main export product, continued to affect domestic economic activity. The Chilean economy grew 0.1 percent on a sequential basis in the last quarter of the year after expanding 0.3 percent during the previous quarter. However, the details are not particularly encouraging for this year’s growth expectations.”
“The strongest sector in terms of production was the primary sector, which includes agriculture, mining and forestry. This sector posted a growth rate of 5.6 percent during the year. However, output in the all-important mining sector within the primary sector dropped 0.2 percent during the year.
“Overall, the Chilean economy performed relatively well taking into consideration the challenging regional and global economic environment. We expect the Chilean economy to continue to show a weak performance in the coming quarters, but expect conditions to improve somewhat as the global economy stabilizes and some regional economies improve their own growth prospects. However, we are not expecting the Chilean economy to return to growth rates close to 6 or 7 percent in the short to medium term.”
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